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Unions and Labor: is Dean Mighell right?

By Tristan Ewins - posted Wednesday, 24 February 2010


What should unions do?

The worth of direct organisational affiliation of unions to the ALP in Australia has been called into question because, with the abuse of the Conference process, old channels of policy influence for unions are effectively annulled.

For many it seems that all that is left is a “carving up of the spoils” of safe Labor seats and other related career paths. Some figures genuinely try to work within these channels for what is right, but often the interests of ordinary workers and union members seem to be forgotten in this process.

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Mighell posits, as an alternative to the labourist tradition in Australia which involves direct organisational affiliation of unions with the ALP, the example of unions in the United States. He notes the attempts by organised labour in the US to influence the position of both Democratic and Republican candidates: backing those who are ultimately more sympathetic to their interests. The conditions prevalent in the US are, however, are radically at variance with Australian conditions.

With the exception of minor centrist and left-of-centre parties such as the Australian Democrats and the Australian Greens, the prevalent Australian political conditions have been those of a two-party system. For much of the modern history of Australia, thus, the political milieu has taken the form of polarisation between conservative parties, and the Australian Labor Party as the “political wing” of the Australian labour movement.

In recent decades this polarisation has further exacerbated deeply ingrained prejudices in Australia’s Conservative parties against organised labour.

While sometimes paying lip-service to the idea that organised labour in Australia rightly deserves some minimal regime of rights, the real outlook from the hard-right leadership of Australia’s Conservative parties today is one of pursuing the destruction of the organisational and social base of their main political rival. This takes the form not only of attempts to defeat the ALP and the broader Left electorally, but to forever “break the back” of organised labour and create a “free for all” when it comes to the wages and conditions of Australian workers - a move which could create a “downward spiral” in this regard.

That said, can this state of affairs be altered?

The Liberal Party in Australia was not always so dominated by factions of the “hard right” as is the case today. Figures such as Ian MacPhee, who were purged from the parliamentary party in the period from the 1980s to 1990, represented a kind of progressive social liberalism for which there was a real and legitimate role for unions, as well as a preference for a mixed economy. Added to this was some genuine support for the principles of social justice, and the rights of refugees. Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has also since emerged as a consistent and powerful critic of the dominant hard right of the party he once led.

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But if this state of affairs is to be challenged, it will be a long, hard struggle. The challenge is not merely one of organisational and cultural reform inside the Liberal Party. There is a struggle at the level of popular and academic culture: a struggle for the “common sense” of Australian politics. This is the struggle to define those “invisible boundaries” of the contested “relative centre”: those boundaries which most political players are compelled to observe in mainstream debate for fear of electoral backlash.

Against this backdrop, Australia needs decent and progressively minded activists not only within the Labor Party, the Australian Greens and various progressive movements, but also fighting for the soul of the Liberal Party - for that strain of social liberalism which that party’s hard right has sought so ruthlessly to marginalise, uproot and destroy.

That said, organised labour in Australia needs to take note of these conditions, and what this implies for the interests of their members, and for the social democratic and democratic socialist values which they espouse.

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About the Author

Tristan Ewins has a PhD and is a freelance writer, qualified teacher and social commentator based in Melbourne, Australia. He is also a long-time member of the Socialist Left of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He blogs at Left Focus, ALP Socialist Left Forum and the Movement for a Democratic Mixed Economy.
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